Master Chemist, Master Chef
by TheGirlWhoRemembers
Summary: Angus MacGyver is an excellent chemist. Cooking is applied edible chemistry. Why, then, is Mac so bad at it? Episode tag to 3.12, Fence and Suitcase and Americium-241.


AN: Spoilers for 3.12, Fence + Suitcase + Americium-241, both in the story (minor) and in my thoughts on it at the end (major).

* * *

 **MACGYVER'S RESIDENCE**

 **LA**

* * *

 _Focus, MacGyver, focus._

 _Concentrate._

Calling on all his powers of concentration, the legendary focus and compartmentalization he could achieve on missions (when _lives_ were at stake, innocent lives…rather than dinner), Mac put his garlic and herb focaccia dough, already pressed into the tin and dimpled for even rising, aside, setting a timer to check on it in twenty minutes. He then checked on the salted caramel for the tart he was making that was going on the stove.

 _Diacetyl production, as you can tell from the delicious caramel scent in the air, is proceeding nicely._

 _Despite what you might hear on some cooking shows or see on Google, caramelization is not an example of the Maillard reaction, since it involves pyrolysis of sugar, instead of reaction with amino acids…_

 _You know, we really should establish a database of Maillard reaction products produced by common foodstuffs; it'd have a lot of potential for forensic applications. GC-MS should do, after derivatization, though it'd probably have to be high-res, so we might have to get a new column, which means talking to Matty about the budget. And we'd have to put together a compound library of likely candidates, which means working through a lot of potential products from the ketosamines, such as…_

 _No, no, no._

 _Focus, MacGyver. Focus!_

 _The Maillard reaction's potential ultimate products might be a lot more interesting than stirring caramel, but you have got to concentrate. Caramel now, Maillard reaction later._

Mac, running through his mental to-do list, then picked up the pasta dough he had resting on the counter, and pulled out his and Bozer's pasta maker (well, more accurately Bozer's – he'd been required to buy Bozer a new one and forbidden from using it after he'd borrowed the old one and used it in a way that his best friend really didn't approve of). He portioned the dough, then started running it through the pasta maker to flatten it into sheets.

Halfway through rolling a sheet, he smelled a faint whiff of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and dropping the pasta sheet, hurried over to the stove and turned off the burner under his caramel, to find that it was _very_ slightly burned.

He examined it and gave it a sniff. It wasn't really that burned (unlike the roast he'd tried to make for Bozer about a week ago), so was probably salvageable.

Besides, burnt caramel was one of those food trends going around.

Mac carefully poured his caramel sauce over the set chocolate ganache in the baked tart shell he had sitting on the counter, then put it in the fridge.

He checked on the marinara sauce he had bubbling away on the stove, double-checking to make sure it was on low heat.

(He didn't know why, but he tended to turn the oven and the stove too high.)

(Bozer claimed it was because he liked fire and explosions too much and it was all in his subconscious.)

(Mac maintained that his best friend was taking the Freudian stuff he'd learned in film school too seriously…but sometimes, he did wonder. He hadn't come up with a better explanation yet, after all.)

He tasted the sauce, and made a noise of approval, before setting aside the spoon and returning to rolling out pasta sheets.

 _You know, I could make a couple of changes to make this go much faster. Grab the drill from the garage, make a little attachment point, maybe adjust this part a little so it exerts more force-_

 _No. Stop that, MacGyver._

 _Concentrate on dinner._

 _Remember what happened last time you decided to make an on-the-fly improvement to kitchen equipment while you were cooking?_

His house had filled with smoke, the fire alarm had beeped so long that it ran out of batteries and he'd ruined the dinner he was trying to make for Bozer to cheer him up.

He finished rolling the pasta, then cut it into strips, and set it aside to boil later.

The timer for his focaccia rising went off, and pleased to see that it'd risen, he put it in the oven after double-checking the temperature, and set another timer, banishing all the ideas and thoughts and titbits on fermentation and the force that a growing bubble of carbon dioxide could exert and the elasticity of focaccia dough his brain offered up.

 _Later, MacGyver. Later. You can write down that equation linking rise level to fermentation rate, temperature, rise time and dough elasticity later. Oh, I must remember to test if I can approximate to an ideal gas-_

 _No, stop that, MacGyver. Later._

He took the meatballs he'd prepared earlier out of the fridge and started to dry them with a paper towel.

 _Now, you're probably wondering why in the world I'm standing around, drying meatballs._

 _It's because of thermodynamics._

 _Okay, admittedly, that's not really helpful. Quite literally everything that happens around you can be ultimately explained by the laws of thermodynamics, if you think about it._

 _In this case, we're taking one of the more simple examples of thermodynamics: Le Chatelier's principle. Also known as the equilibrium law._

 _Now, the Maillard reaction I mentioned earlier, which is responsible for the browning of meat, produces water. Therefore, according to Le Chatelier's principle, the less water present, the further the position of equilibrium of the Maillard reaction will lie to the yummy, flavourful products._

Mac finished drying the meatballs, washed his hands and put on a pot of water to boil and salted it, like Bozer and all the people on cooking shows insisted.

He then tasted the sauce, and satisfied, took it off the heat and put it on a pot holder for later.

Distracted by the recollection of the latest in a long line of studies regarding lycopenes and their potential preventative effects for cardiovascular disease (he really needed to show Jack those articles – or, more accurately, summarise them for him, in layman's terms – since his partner's cholesterol levels were beginning to creep up; even if the correlation did not signify causation, an increased intake of lycopenes via foodstuffs was not going to _hurt_ ), Mac forgot to turn off the burner, until he went to put his pasta in the boiling water.

Cursing himself, and honestly considering himself lucky this time, Mac turned off the burner, and stirred the pasta to prevent it from sticking, banishing all lycopene-related thoughts from his brain, as well as trying to keep the starch-related ones from dropping out of the constant whirl of thoughts in his mind (which he could ignore reasonably well) to take centre stage (which made them very hard to ignore).

 _Come on, MacGyver. Focus. Concentrate._

 _You're doing this for your family, after all._

 _Cook now, science later._

 _Seriously, why does Alton Brown never seem to have this problem?_

* * *

Twenty minutes later, with a proud grin and feeling _exhausted_ , Mac set the bowl of meatballs in marinara sauce on the table outside, and gratefully accepted the glass of wine that Jack passed him. Meanwhile, Bozer put down the focaccia, and started to cut it up.

Riley, Matty and Jack (just home from visiting his sister in Texas – this was his welcome home dinner) surveyed the spread in front of them, looking decidedly impressed.

Bozer grinned and rubbed his hands together.

'Now, save room for dessert, 'cause there's salted caramel chocolate tart with vanilla ice-cream!'

Riley arched an eyebrow.

'Home-made?'

Bozer nudged Mac rather deliberately, who just nodded.

'Yeah, I, um, made everything except the ice-cream.'

Jack paused with a meatball halfway to his mouth.

'Wait a minute, _you_ made this?' Mac nodded, and Jack eyed the meatball with a level of suspicion he usually reserved for people like Charlotte Cole. 'Is this gonna transmogrify us into space aliens from Mars, brother? You testing your latest experiment on us?'

Mac raised an eyebrow, as he flopped into his chair and took a long draught of wine.

He was far too tired to bicker with Jack, on one hand.

On the other hand…it was bickering with Jack.

'A, transmogrification, in the context you're using it, is not a thing. B, absolutely not. C, would I really conduct highly unethical human experimentation on my own family?'

Jack considered that for a moment.

'A, it totally is, man! I gotta whole lot of movies I can show you to prove it! B, you never know with you. C, yeah, good point, you wouldn't.' Jack paused. 'Unless you're not actually Mac.' He brandished his fork, which still had a meatball on it, at his partner. 'Who are you and what have you done with our boy?'

Bozer, Riley and Matty all exchanged a very long-suffering, albeit fond look. Then, Bozer kept dishing out focaccia, while Matty took a long draught of wine and Riley rubbed her temple with a hand.

Meanwhile, Mac rolled his eyes, and being too tired to keep this going and think of a witty retort, just took a big bite of the meatball that Jack was holding in front of his face, before spreading his arms wide in a _see_? gesture.

'Huh.' Jack glanced from the meatball to his partner. 'Guess this is just a meatball after all, since you ain't a space alien. Least, you don't look like one.'

With that, Jack happily dug into the rest of the meatball, then his pasta.

Riley passed Mac the salad, shaking her head at him.

'Seriously, Mac, you look exhausted.'

Matty nodded, raising an eyebrow at him.

'You weren't this tired after flying to and from Russia urgently and chasing a dirty bomb, Blondie.'

Jack, who had demolished half his plate already, looked up, talking with his mouth full, earning looks of disgust from Matty and Riley.

'Yeah, you know, I think the last time I saw you this tired was _Cairo_ , brother.'

Mac was a bundle of energy, normally, with an uncanny ability to bounce back, fresh as a daisy, after a quick meal and a few hours of sleep.

The blonde picked up his fork, something that took far more effort than it should have, and gestured vaguely to the spread in front of them.

'The concentration required took a bit out of me.'

Bozer patted him on the back.

'Turns out my bro can seriously cook, _if_ he manages to not get distracted.'

Matty tilted her head a little to the right.

'Not enough science in cooking for you, Baby Einstein?'

They all knew what could happen when Mac got bored. Heck, the whole Phoenix knew, as did a whole Army unit, most of MIT and half the population of Mission City.

They'd all learned the hard way.

The blonde shook his head, picking up a meatball with his fork, voice wry.

'Nope. Too _much_ science in cooking. I get ideas or start thinking about something, and…'

He waved vaguely again.

Jack nodded.

'Yeah, I was wondering why you couldn't cook a meal to save your life, since you're Mr Wizard, Bill Nye and Miss Frizzle in one, and cooking is chemistry and all.' Everyone else looked at Jack with a bit of incredulity. He waved a hand. 'I was stuck at home recovering from a nasty GSW, watched a lot of re-runs of that Alton Brown show. Not the funny one with the sabotages, the one with the real low production values. _Good Eats_?'

Riley, Bozer, Mac and Matty looked a little incredulous, but at the same time, _what did we expect?_ Then, Riley shrugged, and pointed at Mac.

'You _are_ really good at chemistry, so if cooking is just chemistry, you _should_ be good at it.'

Matty rolled more pasta onto her fork.

'And this is, Blondie.'

There were noises of assent around the table. Mac smiled at the praise. Matty didn't give it out often, or lightly.

'Thanks, guys.'

Then, Bozer smirked mischievously.

'And actually, you know, the profs at MIT might have something to say about the whole Mac being good at chemistry thing…' The blonde groaned, and Bozer smirked a little wider. 'You see, Smitty told me a story, about a time when he decided to test something out in the middle of freshman chem lab-'

Mac held up his hands.

'No one was hurt, and it only happened once.'

'You dyed the whole ceiling blue, it's apparently still blue, and you looked like you were half-Smurf for two weeks, bro!' Bozer pulled out his new phone, which thankfully hadn't been destroyed by Mac, for once. He'd also be getting insurance; Jan in Accounts was looking into an insurance deal for all Phoenix agents to cover phone destruction (deliberate or accidental) by one Angus MacGyver. 'I got photographic evidence!'

* * *

AN: This does not have much point, but I hope it was fun!

I have long been a proponent of the headcanon that Mac can cook, since cooking is just applied edible chemistry. Seriously, chemistry practicals like the ones that Mac must have done at MIT are just recipes with strange ingredients. Ergo, if you can do a chem prac, you can follow a recipe, so you can cook to some degree. Given what we saw at the start of the ep (in which we can tell that Mac is capable of food prep, but tends to set fire to or burn things), and the end of the ep (in which we can tell that Mac can bake and considers it maths and chemistry, so can obviously follow culinary instructions, but burning down the kitchen is really the major problem), this is the modified headcanon that I now have – he can cook, provided that he doesn't get distracted by all the Science!thoughts and ideas that cooking brings out, and hence forget to take the roast out of the oven, or let the water over-boil, etc.

Thoughts on 3.12, Fence + Suitcase + Americium-241: I really enjoyed that ep. It was fun, it had lots of MacGyver-ing, and it was just a standard, enjoyable _MacGyver_ ep. I didn't miss Jack as much as I did in 3.08, Revenge + Catacombs + Le Fantome, but I did miss him more than I did in 3.04, Guts + Fuel + Hope. I think it helped that they did some clever writing on this – this was a 'filler' ep, with no deep emotional plot point that Jack is so good for, and Bozer and Riley (as well as Charlotte – though I honestly don't think she did a huge amount in the ep, aside from the ending portion) filled the gaps well. There weren't really any points where Jack's gun and physical badassery would have helped the team out immensely, in my opinion, and I think what they gave Bozer and Riley to do in the ep reflected their skill-sets and abilities. The end section with catching the Fence, I think, showed that really well – Riley is awesome, tough and brave (and learns super-fast, bluffing/buying time like Mac often does, and does know how to shoot, after what was inferred to be lessons from Jack in S2/between S1 and S2), Mac can make something useful out of practically anything, and Bozer might not have their skills, but he's got his own strengths (driving a car into someone is a really common TV/movie trope, don't you think?).

Also – I reckon Bozer and Leanna are going to break up soon. I expect that the 'Leanna is having second thoughts about moving in with Bozer, and Bozer is down because of that' thing is a lead-up to that. I think it's because Reign Edwards got a bigger role in another show? (I read something about that somewhere…)

In other news – I'm nearly done with a new fic! It's called _Accidental Happily Ever After_ , and is the fourth in my _MacGyver_ fairytales series. It's a retelling of _The Frog Prince_ , and is a very long fic, about 90K words, with a few scenes left to go.

Here's the summary:

The Knight Sir Jack Dalton, the Engineer Angus MacGyver and his childhood best friend Wilt Bozer save the Kingdom of Phoenix from the evil wizard Murdoc, but pay a price in the form of a furry little problem. However, this curse might be a blessing in disguise, giving Mac a chance at a happy ending at last, Jack a second chance, and Bozer a chance to grow.

I should finish it today or tomorrow, and the first half is already edited, so I think I'll start posting in on Wednesday.


End file.
